It's all about karma, upvotes, followers, and engagement
With over 100 million active users daily, Reddit is a key player in shaping online conversations and discussions across every topic imaginable. It was a channel Discover Halifax had only purchased media in, but otherwise have been inactive.
It has become one of the top channels that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) are sourcing to answer questions or prompts from potential visitors looking for things to do in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
With 10 per cent of travellers now using these tools as a part of their travel inspiration and planning process, it was time for Discover Halifax to launch our own subreddit, or moderated page. This helps elevate our content to Reddit users, but more importantly, to the LLMs who source from it, that love authentic, timely, curated, and most importantly, free information, since it can’t source from behind a paywall due to copyright issues.
For example, when someone asks the LLM a question like “Where are the best places in the world to eat lobster?”, it retrieves information from its own knowledge bank first. But for things it needs to confirm or find out, the LLM will look to trusted, online sources, such as Reddit, to glean the information to build an answer. While similar to how the Google search engine works, the LLM will then curate all information and build the user a new piece of content, instead of directing them to a relevant website.
It appears there are very few organizations like ours experimenting in this space, and we’re pleased to be among the first. In partnership with Foundation Marketing, an approach was developed for a road map, but without an established set of best practices for the industry, the team is learning and improving as we go.
If you’ve been on Reddit, you know it can be casual and at times, it can be grouchy, but it’s generally helpful. For people new to Reddit, the things you want are:
- Followers and engagement on your subreddit;
- Upvotes, which is how valuable other users deem your content, which helps it rise to the top; and
- Good karma, a measure of user contributions and reputation, for your personality. Not to complicate things, but a brand needs a persona who engages with outside content. In our case, we chose Alex, a gender-neutral, short, and easily pronounced name. Give them a follow, and some karma.
For the LLMs, we need to appear credible, authoritative, and serve up content that is likely to be queried in LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Grok.
At the time of writing (September 2025), our Reddit account is two weeks old and has 22 followers. Alex’s karma is at 43 and they’ve made 29 contributions. The content ranges from where to get ice cream, hiking suggestions, and events still to come in 2025. Give us a follow!